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Subadhra Oza has been living in Goandevi, one of the many slums that surround the Mumbai airport, for 40 years. "This place was a marsh when we moved in. It was full of bootleggers. We built it with rubble and cement, and made it a safe place to live. Now they want the land back. Why didn't they claim it all these years when it was no good?" she asks.
Nearly 30 slum pockets such as Goandevi, with approximately 85,000 hutments that house some four lakh people, will soon be demolished according to the modernisation plan of the Mumbai airport. The proliferating slums already squat on 276 acres (one acre is 0.4 hectare) of prime airport land. Under a new agreement, thousands of families will probably have to relocate to far-flung suburbs that have little infrastructure and almost no civic facilities.
Since February this year, the State government has been issuing notices to slum-dwellers that they could be evicted as the airport requires the land for its new project, and the drive became aggressive in early May. While rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) has been assured, no one has given the slum-dwellers any clear plan as to where and when they will be relocated.
"We have schools, offices and small factories in these slum colonies. If you remove a slum you shatter a small economy that contributes to the city," says Baban Kamble, a social worker who lives in Vakola.
After the GVK-SA consortium won the Mumbai airport modernisation bid last year, there has been a host of plans to get the project rolling. Mumbai International Airport Private Limited (MIAL), which is the new joint venture between GVK-SA and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and has exclusive rights to execute the modernisation and expansion plans, categorically says the project will not see fruition unless the slums are removed. Sensing impending ouster, slum-dwellers of the 30 threatened pockets have come together to demand a comprehensive R&R package for them.
"As per the Operational, Management and Development Agreement (OMDA), it is our responsibility to rehabilitate the slum-dwellers. We have begun the process along with the State government. The problem is that the government has yet to identify the land and that is a huge task given the lack of land availability in Mumbai," says a spokesperson of MIAL.
The urgency to clear the area has also to be understood, he says. Unlike Delhi airport, which has more than 5,500 acres to build on, Mumbai has only 2,000 acres on the outer limit.
"Our biggest constraint is we are landlocked," he says. "Other airports are built on the peripheries of cities. Mumbai airport is in the middle of the city. There is no scope to grow, whatsoever. So we need whatever land is available."
MIAL says Mumbai airport has an exponential growth rate of 25 per cent annually. In the last year, 22.25 million passengers crossed its terminals. This is expected to increase to 40 million a year in the next couple of years.
When the issue reached a stalemate, MIAL appealed to the Supreme Court in mid-April to direct the Maharashtra government to revise the cut-off date for legalising slums; it is January 1, 1995 for most of them. If the dweller has a photo-pass or any other proof to establish that he lived at a particular shanty before this date, he or she is eligible for R&R. In some cases such as the Maharashtra Urban Transport Project, the cut-off date was relaxed to 2000 or a Baseline Socio-Economic Survey (BSES) was conducted in order to include pavement-dwellers in some bracket and rehabilitate them.
Towards the end of May, acting on a Supreme Court authorisation, which essentially told the State government to rehabilitate all encroachers on the airport land irrespective of the cut-off date, the government issued an ordinance declaring the extension of the cut-off date to 2000. However, the airport slum-dwellers have never had photo-passes or any other legal documents to say they had a right to the property. This essentially puts them on a weak wicket, says Kamble. In the case of other slums, the Collector could issue passes, but since the land on which the slums stand belongs to the airport, the district administration is under no obligation to provide passes. "We exist because of political patronage," says Kamble.
All the slums fall in the Bandra North constituency, which was represented in the Lok Sabha by the late Sunil Dutt of the Congress for many years. Whenever there were attempts in the past to clear the area, Dutt would sit in a dharna and make sure the slums remained. Now that he is no longer around, and politicians have probably realised that they cannot hamper the airport project, the slum-dwellers have been left with little protection. They say Dutt's daughter, Priya Dutt, who won from the constituency later, have not shown her face after the election.
"We are willing to move if they give us a justifiable reason," says Kamble. "We first read the land was needed for a third runway. Rcently, we found out from newspaper reports that the runway was not possible and so MIAL was planning to lease out the area for hotels, technology parks, shopping malls and a golf course. They told us we had to move for security reasons. But if the land is to be used commercially, it is unfair. Real estate prices are high in Mumbai and MIAL will make thousands of crores of rupees on the leases."
According to the Loksahi Hakk Sanghatana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with the slum-dwellers, GVK has stated on record that MIAL is targeting 55 per cent of its revenue from the non-aeronautical segment by setting up offices and retail outlets. "In the guise of public purpose, MIAL is going to make massive profits," says Antony Samy of the Sanghatana. The AAI will be violating a law if this happens because under the amended AAI Act, 2003, it could only lease airport premises "in the public interest or for better management of the airport". Handing over prime real estate held by a public corporation to a private company for commercial exploitation, says Samy, can by no stretch of imagination be construed as being "in the public interest".
While MIAL admits that a third runway may not be constructed, it says the land is definitely needed for more parking bays, hangars, cargo space and other airport infrastructure requirements. At an initially estimated investment of Rs.2,400 crore, the first phase of the project is to have an integrated terminal, connecting the domestic and international terminals, at the Sahar airport. "A world class airport is critical to Mumbai's growth. The government seems to have realised that and have been extremely responsive to our plans," says the MIAL spokesperson.
Jockin Arputham of the National Slum Dwellers Association agrees that a world-class airport is indeed important. "People are willing to move if the consortium wants to build another runway or expand the operational and service areas, but definitely not if the land is used for commercial purposes," he says. Arputham argues that recently, slum or pavement dwellers in the city moved out when they were given a good R&R package. In this case, however, there has been no survey for the government or MIAL even to know where to begin.
However, the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), the nodal agency handling R&R, says a company called MM Consultants, which floated the Dharavi Development Project, is carrying out a survey. Asia's largest slum, Dharavi is the centre of many Mumbai plans as it is located right in the middle of the city and is extremely valuable real estate.
According to Arputham, who is battling the Dharavi project, the company is hardly competent to carry out a survey of any kind. "In Dharavi, it is a real estate scam and it is pulling the same trick on the airport slums," he says. An MMRDA official says that the R&R package will be declared once the survey is over and eligibility decided. However, he admits that no land has been identified for relocation.
Arputham says it is unfair how slum-dwellers are treated vis-a-vis middle-class families. For instance, when the government needed some land near the airport in Kalina, which had middle-class buildings on it, not only were the residents given new accommodation but the government ensured that it was in the same locality.
Meanwhile, non-resident Indian businessman Mukesh Mehta says the land should be handed over to private builders for some progress to happen. He says they will be able to give good prices as well as buy land elsewhere to rehabilitate the slum-dwellers.
In May, the Central government approved a plan to rehabilitate the slum-dwellers on the saltpan lands in Mumbai. The 5,000 acres of saltpans along the city's coast are probably the only spare land the city is left with. Environmentalists and civic activists are up against the move. They say it not only violates the Coastal Zonal Regulation but also removes a natural barrier against flooding and high tides. There would be no place for water to flow out safely if the saltpans go.
The fact is that neither MIAL nor the MMRDA or the slum associations know exactly what is happening. But notices to clear out are being issued.
"Nobody is against development. But treat us like human beings. After all, we too contribute to the city," says Laxman Sonawane, another resident of Goandevi. "They need to understand why we come to the city. There is nothing left in our villages, particularly when our crops fail." That is, indeed, the problem of the urban poor, for which there seems few solutions.
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